


Entendre

by ThrillingDetectiveTales



Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Fluff, Gen, M/M, POV Outsider, Period Typical Attitudes, Period Typical Slang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-12 18:53:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19235083
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThrillingDetectiveTales/pseuds/ThrillingDetectiveTales
Summary: Buck wants to talk about Nixon and Winters, which would be a hell of a lot easier if Harry could understand what he was trying to say.





	Entendre

**Author's Note:**

> This ficlet was originally spawned by a desire to see Harry Welsh being a bro to Nix, but it pretty immediately devolved into a vague conversation about the nature of Dick and Nix's relationship while Buck and Harry blatantly creep on them in the company mess. It may not be totally accurate to timeline canon but I just wanted to finish it so I can turn my focus back to the vampire!Dick story that's eaten my brain.
> 
> I will note for those who may be bothered by it that there is an extended metaphor involved in this story implying that two of the characters are 'fruits.' Though discussion of the characters and the relationship is positive, I employed the term because I felt the characters may lack other, more nuanced vocabulary considering their time and context. 
> 
> Not beta-read, so there may be typos. Enjoy!

“You ever wonder about that?”

Harry glanced up from his half-finished serving of gray Army beef and over-stewed, vaguely green slop that might have been a vegetable in its previous life just long enough to follow the line of Buck’s gaze. He sounded too honestly invested in the question to be making a stealth pass at Harry’s food but in this outfit it paid to be wary of hot rations, even when they were cooked to roughly the consistency of shoe-leather and brined with a nearly unpalatable measure of salt.

A cursory investigation in the direction Buck was looking failed to turn up anything more sinister than Captains Winters and Nixon, both propped against the far wall of the canteen with mess trays in their hands.

Dick was picking absently over his dinner and making a genuine if unsuccessful effort at subtlety while he surveilled his men. There was a sharper than usual edge to the watchful wariness that overtook him every time Easy scraped through another impossible altercation, symptomatic of some internal working the nature of which Harry couldn’t begin to guess after and had little notion of how to properly alleviate.

Nix, on the other hand, had given up any pretense of interest in his food and was chewing lazily on a cigarette, oscillating shamelessly between eyeballing the room at large from his position at Dick’s shoulder and peering fretfully over at the man himself.

Harry frowned back down at his plate and asked through a mouthful of rubbery protein, “‘bout what?”

“That,” Buck said. “Winters and Nixon.”

He kept his voice low and hunched his shoulders a little, eyes flicking suspiciously back and forth like he thought someone might be listening in on their conversation. Someone probably was, Harry considered without any real animosity. Eavesdropping was a matter of course in the company mess, which Buck ought to know well enough by now made it a lackluster choice of venue for the discussion of sensitive matters; particularly those involving, however obliquely, officers of seniority.

Still, Buck was clearly chomping at the bit to share some sordid scuttlebutt and Harry liked to keep a finger on the pulse, as it were. If Buck’s mysterious gossip was enough of a gut-buster he might even share it with the boys later - Dick rarely had a problem with taking a little humor at his own expense, and while Nix could go either way depending on his mood he could also generally be prevailed upon to share a few mouthfuls of that scotch he kept in his pocket even when his temper started to sour.

“What about ‘em?” Harry scooped up a spoonful of might-have-been-vegetables while Buck shifted in his seat.

“They’re just - ” He poked at a runny swamp of rehydrated potato flakes, trying without much success to get them to mix with the oil-rich gravy floating stubbornly on top. “They’re close, right? They seem...” He was quiet for a second, fork hovering an awkward inch or two above his plate. He let it drop back down, tines meeting the edge of the plate with a soft sound like a muted bell, and repeated, “Close.”

“Sure,” Harry agreed with a shrug. “They’ve known each other a long time. Back before Toccoa, even.”

They hadn’t been quite as bad then as they were now, practically climbing into each other’s pockets at every turn, but by the time Harry had blustered his way past all of the fighting infractions and shaken out into the 506th proper it had already been the rule rather than the exception that wherever Dick Winters went Lewis Nixon wasn’t usually very far behind.

“So they’ve always been...” Buck struggled for a second, cornsilk eyebrows furrowing. “Like that?”

“Been like what? Close?”

“Yeah,” Buck nodded, his face flushing a little under the streaky gray residue of field dirt and greasepaint. “Close.”

“I guess so.” Harry was beginning to suspect that there was a second conversation going on in the background of the peculiar back-and-forth he and Buck were embroiled in, only he had no idea how to even begin parsing out what that ulterior thread of communication might be. “Since I’ve known ‘em, at least.”

“Right,” Buck said, cutting his gaze pointedly back down to his plate as the tips of his ears flared pink. “And that doesn’t bother you?”

“Why would it bother me?”

So far as Harry was concerned, it made for a staunchly superior set of circumstances in a soldier’s life if his CO’s were friends, or at least friendly. Everybody knew that nepotism was the heart's-blood of the American military, and it was almost always better to have the fellows up top working together to bolster their collective company in both deed and reputation than to have them using the men as pawns in a bloody bid to outmaneuver one another on the long slog to greatness.

“I just figured - ” Buck started, and then shook his head and pressed his mouth into a thin line, stirring at the mess he’d made of his dinner. “I don’t know. It’s the kind of thing that would bother a lot of folks.” He looked up and added in a hurried hush, “Not me. I mean - it doesn’t bother me. Not really. Met all kinds in California, you know?”

Harry frowned, sawing at the slab of meat sliding cockeyed across his tray.

“What does California have to do with anything?” He dragged the jagged-edged cut of his spoils through a stagnating puddle of gravy and tucked the whole sopping mess into his cheek. “We’ve been in the ETO since last September.”

“I’m aware,” Buck said drily. “And I just meant, you know. I’ve seen it before.”

“Seen what before?

“Fellows like that.”

“Like Winters and Nixon?”

Buck nodded. There was perhaps a punchline in there somewhere as to whether he was referring more specifically to Quakers or drunks, but Harry was too honestly stymied to puzzle it out. Instead he asked, “You mean soldiers?”

“You know,” Buck said, pale gaze trained intently on Harry across the foot and a half of hastily constructed dinner table between them. Harry shook his head, slow and confused. Buck made a thoughtful, circular gesture in the air with his fork and raised his eyebrows expectantly. “Fellows who, uh. Specialize in summer produce?”

There was a certain gravitas to Buck’s delivery that led Harry to believe he was implying something beyond your generic farmer, though he would be hard-pressed to guess what. Harry had never much cared for prevarication - too often lacking the patience to read effectively between the lines and thus frequently ending up more confused than when he started - and here Buck was making a championship run at the very thing when they were both tired, sore, and sober to boot.

He caught a few of the boys glancing curiously over and thought darkly that they had better sew this business up before the indecipherable circles Buck was talking wandered into the realm of public forum.

Dick might be willing to let the men take the piss when levity was badly wanting but that didn’t mean he would allow for open gossip within his own earshot, especially amongst his NCOs. More still was the pity if said gum-flapping involved any mention of Nix, whose character Dick guarded against the suggestion of tarnish even more keenly than he did his own. He certainly wouldn’t welcome such mutterings when he was wound tight enough he looked ready to go off like a bear-trap at the slightest hint of pressure, in any case, and Harry wasn’t about to risk springing him where Nix was near enough to see.

“Listen, Buck,” he sighed, “it’s been a long day.”

This was admittedly something of an understatement. Easy was two weeks and change into the three days of hard fighting they’d promised Colonel Sink, stuck in an endless, stuttering reel of thundering artillery and concussive weapon reports interspersed with lengthy, silent stints packed sardine-tight into troop transports that fell far short of the comfort or security it would take to provide any real respite.

Harry thought he could be forgiven a certain shortness of temper, considering. “So get to it or go see the chaplain, alright?”

“I was trying to be tactful,” Buck griped. “My mistake.”

“Tact, sure,” Harry said. “I must’ve missed muster on the day they were handing that out.”

Buck huffed a faint laugh into his sleeve.

“I’m just trying to say it’s good of you, you know?” His voice was muffled around a thick mouthful of potato paste. “Sticking by them, and everything.”

“We’re in the middle of a god-damned warzone and they’re our commanding officers. Where the hell else would I be?”

Buck cut him a look. “Don’t be obtuse.”

“Who’s obtuse?” Harry argued. “I ain’t the one jawin’ on about nothing.”

“I’m not - ” Buck snapped, soft pink heat creeping up his throat. He glanced around again, muttering, “I just thought it warranted a little discretion.”

Irritation prickled along the back of Harry’s skull. He straightened up and sighed, letting his hands drop down against the tabletop hard enough that all the nearby cutlery rattled. Talbert, seated a few feet further down the bench, shot him a dirty look from where was hunched over his plate, busily mopping up gravy with an already sodden crust of the stale dark bread they’d been pilfering from any Kraut unfortunate enough to cross their paths. Harry waved him off with an apologetic grimace and turned to meet Buck’s gaze.

“Buck, buddy. I have no idea what the hell you’re talking about.”

Buck rolled his eyes toward the ceiling. “Christ, Welsh, you’re really gonna make me say it?”

“No, no, not at all,” Harry assured breezily, spinning his fork amidst the stringy, glutinous mess that he was almost certain had started out as spinach or something very like it. If he scooped up some of the sad, runny potatoes alongside the sad, badly broiled greens, chewed real careful, and didn’t think too hard, he could almost convince himself it was the slightly putrefied ghost of his ma’s colcannon. “I’d hate for you to have to start talking sense on my account.”

“You’re a real wit, you know that?” Buck grumbled, unimpressed. “Can’t even let a fellow give you a compliment without bellyaching.”

Harry waved his fork over his plate. “Only bellyaching I’m doing’ll be about twenty minutes from now when this hits the DZ.”

Buck snorted and shook his head. “You’re all class, Welsh.”

Harry grinned around the last of what the mess officers had optimistically termed ‘steak’ and made a rude gesture in Buck’s direction.

“You let me know when you’re ready to finish with the chin music, there, Compton, because I’ll tell ya, I’ve got better offers for the evening’s entertainment than to sit around and let you serenade me.”

Kitty had sent pictures along with her most recent correspondence - nothing too salacious, but after more than a year apart it was enough of a thrill just to gaze along the elegant arc of her brow, the soft curve of her smile, the sleek, pale column of her throat. She’d visited the community pool earlier in the summer and Harry wasn’t too proud to admit that the draw of a night spent privately in the company of that photograph far outstripped listening to Buck wag his tongue at length about Nixon and Winters. They were good men and good friends, the lot of them, but Harry harbored little faith in their ability to wear women’s bathing dress with quite the same panache as his beautiful fiancée.

“Yeah, alright,” Buck huffed around a grin, shaking his head and ducking to meet his fork as he lifted it from his plate. He glanced as if on instinct back over toward the far wall where their commanding officers were lingering and Harry followed suit.

While they watched, Nix plucked the butt of his cigarette from his lip and leaned up to murmur something into Dick’s ear, heavy brow arched and mouth tilted in a smirk. Dick slouched down to accommodate him, curling in so that they were pressed together from shoulder to hip. Nix cupped the fingers of one hand over the curve of Dick’s elbow and the brittleness in his posture seemed to slough off and away under the careful pressure, evaporating as surely as the steady stream of smoke that spilled past Nix’s teeth to drift hazily toward the ceiling.

“It’s good,” Buck said, stilted but certain, “that they have each other.”

The muted strain of Dick’s laugh floated through the cacophony of the mess, the corners of his mouth lifting in the dry, measured way that belied his sly and occasionally petty sense of humor. Nix had a particular knack for coaxing that grin out of him, even when Dick had retreated into the strange and somber place inside his head that sometimes saw him prowling camp outskirts and trench lines into the small hours of the morning, skulking through the shadows like a dog waiting to be kicked.

Harry was reminded, suddenly and uncomfortably, of the way that Kitty would sometimes link her elbow through his, leaning in on a cloud of sweet floral perfume to gentle the saw-toothed edge of his temper with her easy humor and a lingering kiss.

 _Oh,_ he thought, stomach twisting unpleasantly as understanding dropped to settle icy in his gut alongside the gluey brick of the evening’s fare.

Summer produce, Buck had said. Harry gritted his teeth against memories of his ma’s kitchen in July - the air thick and hot and sticky with steam coming off the merrily simmering pots crowding the stove, jars lined up along the countertops in eager anticipation of ribbon-winning jams and preserves while he and his brothers hauled in carton after carton of berries and peaches fresh from the nearby orchards.

Nix knocked his knee against Dick’s, sharing some addendum to his comment that had Dick tightening his jaw against a smile and shaking his head, and then settled back into his customary slouch. They were still standing near enough for their shoulders to brush if either of them took a deep breath. Harry struggled to remember the last time he’d seen them at any greater distance.

Summer fuckin’ produce, indeed. Harry shook his head. Buck ought to have just led with ‘fruits’ and saved them both the trouble.

“Yeah,” he said dazedly, and was surprised to find that despite the slightly queasy twist in his belly and the knowing hum that had slithered up under his skin, he meant it when he agreed, “Yeah it is, ain’t it?”

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! 
> 
> It's probably also worth mentioning that I am on both [Tumblr](https://thrillingdetectivetales.tumblr.com) and [Dreamwidth.](http://thrillingdetectivetales.dreamwidth.org)


End file.
